Did you get Claytoon or the Van Aken plastalina modeling clay? ...I understand your sentiment about wanting Newplast so you can model exactly how Aardman do, but it's impractical, and professional puppet makers in the US use Van Aken. Some, I think Nofby for one?, prefer it to Newplast.

I don't like to keep a big stock of it, just because of the cost. But it's always nice to have some amount of a variety of colors. Of course if you have the basic colors and don't mind mixing it (there are a couple ways to mix it), you don't need a lot on hand. I guess it makes a difference if you are working on a specific project (then you can estimate how much you need of what color), or if you want to be creative and experiment. If that's the case, those packs that are divided into four different colors (Claytoon) are good. It's always nice to have enough white or neutral, I think, for making lighter colors. I ended up using more white than I thought I would. Hope that is somewhat helpful, and glad you got your hands on some plasticine!

i formerly had plasticine before van aken but it got my hands all colorful and was a pain to model with as it stuck and got everywhere. then, for Christmas a couple years ago i believe, i got some Claytoon and some skin-colored plasticine (which i just figured out is also Van Aken), but then I sorta forgot completely about stop-motion and animation until recently. before, i had to use the "frame by frame" function on my camera which wouldnt record frames but instead small time increments. now, through this site, i have discovered MonkeyJam and HeliumFrog which have helped me a lot!

and the clay i picked up was Van Aken plasticine (not Claytoon) so now i have skin colored, white, black, blue, red, brown, tan, dark brown, and green. of course some is claytoon so i dont have a full pack of it.